


Dropping the Ball

by Ardatli



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Family Reunions, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, New Year's Eve, With additional appearances from the rest of the gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 12:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13008003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: Cassie'd started texting the moment they left the booth, and her phone’s been going off all night. Kate’s bleary-eyed and wired at the same time, a combination of jet lag, coffee, Tequila Sunrises and dehydration, and she’s not been paying nearly enough attention to Cassie’s sly grin.Kate comes back to New York for New Year's, and nothing is quite as she left it. And that's okay.





	Dropping the Ball

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift fic for [amaranthined](http://amaranthined.tumblr.com/), for the Young Avengers holiday gift exchange for 2017. The prompt was for a story for Kate, friendship with Cassie and Tommy, with Kate/Tommy an option. Background Lucky and Clint if possible. 
> 
> Clint's presence is felt in absentia, but I did get Lucky in there. <3 Happy holidays!

Kate has to admit, it’s a little weird.

Once upon a time she helped bring Cassie Lang’s dad back to life. And then Kate watched her best friend die. Kate was all of what, eighteen? Cassie was fifteen? They were dumb kids playing at being superheroes, bouncing across the playground that was New York City, feeling invulnerable.

Kate survived. Cassie didn’t.

Except now she’s back (it’s a superhero thing, all the best ones do that) and Kate’s in Venice Beach.

Cassie missed a few years in there while she was dead, and Kate’s life rolled on. She moved on. Went to space. Saved the world (more than once). Met some guys, dumped some guys, made some friends. Lost touch with others. Cassie went to Miami.

It’s a good thing the world is smaller these days.

* * *

California’s great, but it’s not the east coast. In some ways that’s an amazing thing – who doesn’t love sunny and eighty degrees every day, palm trees and beaches? (Snowbird, maybe. Her shapeshifting only does Arctic animals.) But on the whole, it’s a great place to be. It’s just that ‘summer, always’ means that there’s no snow, and there are a couple of days of the year where that feels wrong.

Not like ‘an alternate universe where trees grow out of pyramids’ wrong. It’s that more insidious sensation, of the world tilting about five or ten degrees off of true.

Which is how Kate and Cassie got into this conversation in the first place.

Kate’s in her office—it’s a closet, be real, but it’s got a desk to put her feet on and a freezer to hold bags of peas for when she gets hit in the head, and there’s enough space on the floor for a dog bed. Super important, even though Lucky prefers to sleep on her feet.

Anyway, Kate’s in her office, and for once she’s not working. The holiday season’s been great for cases, it’s just that most of them involve someone-maybe-cheating at the office parties, so she’s practically gone nocturnal. She’s got her computer on her lap but the only thing she has open is Skype, and the only thing she’s paying attention to is the pretty blonde girl on the other end of the call.

“You’re being a grinch,” Cassie declares, and she pokes at her webcam with a cheeto. She’s at her dad’s apartment this time. Kate can make out coloured lights strung up haphazardly on the curtain rod half-hidden behind Cassie and the orange powder her snack left on her camera lens. It’s been a couple of years since she was resurrected at fifteen, college is on the horizon now. Her face is older, but her smile’s the same. “Holiday parties are fun!”

“They’re fun if you’re not working at them,” Kate points out. “Taking zoom-lens photos of C-suite executives macking on their secretaries isn’t the same thing.”

Lucky chooses that moment to wake up, yawn and stretch, and poke his muzzle into Kate’s lap. She scratches him behind his ears while Cassie coos at him across the airwaves.

“Do you remember that first New Years we spent together? You, me and the guys.” While they were all still Young Avengers. Kate wouldn’t go back to being that girl for anything, but there are some things she misses.

“Are you kidding?” Cassie’s eyes are alight. “And who’s the best puppy, hey? Lucky’s the best.” Lucky thumps his tail against the floor and Kate could swear he’s giving her a doggy grin right back. “We crashed Billy’s parents’ annual party and then snuck out to that godawful Denny’s on Nassau, by city hall. Eli and Tommy ate so many plates of fries we thought they were going to hurl.”

Kate laughs and Lucky wuffles at her until she starts scratching his ruff again. “I lost five bucks to Teddy betting on coffee pong.”

“He still owes me for that t-shirt. The stain never came out.”

They’re silent for a beat, the nostalgia-laughter dying away. Cassie sets her elbow on the table in front of her and that light is still in her eyes. “We should do it,” she announces, like she thinks Kate can read her mind. “New Years in New York again.” And, “You and me, Kate. You can get us a hotel room on one of your fancy platinum cards, and we can do Times Square, watch the ball drop, make fun of the tourists.”

Kate frowns. “It won’t be like it was, Cass.” She doesn’t even bother mentioning that she doesn’t use her dad’s credit cards anymore.

“Nothing ever is.” Cassie crunches the Cheeto loud, probably because she knows Kate hates the sound. “But it’ll be better than getting to January and only having photos of paunchy middle-aged cheaters to look fondly back on.”

She has a point.

* * *

It’s a good point, and Kate ends up making a deal with herself. If she can close most of her outstanding cases by Christmas, then she can take a few days off to go goof around back on the east coast with Cassie. Ramone offers to take care of Lucky. He’s totally got her thinking that he’s a sad, lonely, deaf old dog who needs premium wet food and almost-constant ear rubs, and Kate isn’t about to blow his cover story.

Plane tickets could have been a problem, but Cassie just makes fun of her. “Please. I’m friends with Avengers.”

“Don’t start _that_ again.”

Kate ends up hitching a ride with Ms. Marvel and Lockjaw, who are passing through. They end up having a long and kind of weird conversation about teen superheroing at a halal place near Kamala’s home in Jersey, a pit stop before Kate heads for Manhattan.

Kamala’s accent is that local thing with the ‘a’s and the ‘r’s, and Kate imagines it down an octave, sees a flash of white hair and a motion blur in her mind’s eye. The sound of it is both comfortably familiar and giving her a pain in her chest at the same time.

Yeah. That sounds about right.

* * *

New York is... New York. The Yorkiest. It hasn’t changed since she left, and she doubts it ever really will. They say that it’s a city you can’t ever get out from under your skin, and there’s some part of her that knows it’s true.

The rest of her is remembering palm trees and wishing she’d brought a heavier jacket.

They recognize her at the hotel, one she used to stay in with her dad sometimes. Cassie’s waiting in the lobby, a wool hat pulled down over her ears like she’s not used to the cold anymore either. She pounces the moment Kate gets inside, arms and legs wrapped around her and it’s the biggest, warmest, most enthusiastic hug Kate’s had in years.

A couple of hours later they’ve got Chinese takeout and Haagen Daaz, they’ve done the extra catching up on all the stuff that doesn’t get said over Skype, and they’re sacked out on the double suite’s surprisingly comfortable couch in pajamas and the matching pairs of fuzzy penguin slippers that Cassie brought as a present.

It’s amazing how easy it is to slide back into this part of her old life, like shoes so well broken in that you don’t notice while you’re wearing them that the soles are peeling apart.

Sometimes you just gotta wear the old shoes, holey soles or not, and give your feet a rest from the new ones.

Shoe metaphors. Clint would roll his eyes and tell her she was overthinking things, probably with a ‘girlie-girl’ thrown in for good measure, but what did Clint know about anything?

“Boys,” Cassie’s poking her with her toe and Kate snaps back to the present-day, ice cream dripping off the spoon and back into the half-pint tub between them. “Come on, you’re in the middle of everyone-famous-and-hot-land. You can’t tell me there hasn’t been anyone.”

“There are many, many hot people,” Kate agrees, then when Cassie won’t stop twirling her spoon in the air to gesture her to keep talking, Kate grabs it and eats her ice cream too.

“Hey!”

“There have been a couple of guys,” Kate admits.

“Like I said-”

“But nothing serious. Maybe. I don’t know.” Things are complicated. She hates that word. “I’m here with you over the holidays aren’t I?”

“You’d be here even if there was a boy.” Cassie steals her spoon back, and the tub of ice cream for good measure. “Because you love me best.”

Kate tucks her feet up underneath her and she smiles, Cassie’s warmth an anchor point that had been missing in her world for too long. “It’s true. I love you best of all.”

* * *

New Year’s Eve and they’re making an actual effort at getting down to Times Square, because apparently Kate got stupid and forgot that it was a terrible idea. “This is awful,” she tells Cassie, her face shoved into some stranger’s armpit and the train rocking like it started on evening drinking early. “I hate everything about this. Why are we taking the train anyway?”

“Because Tony claimed the Quinjet for the evening,” Cassie replies, dry and sarcastic. “And Dr. Richards won’t give me the keys to the Fantasticar.” They barely even make eye contact before she’s giggling and Kate is biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from grinning back and giving Cass the satisfaction.

They pull in to a station, barely halfway there, and if Kate has to spend another nanosecond riding the vomit-comet she’s gonna scream. Cassie grabs her arm and pulls her out, though, through the doors as they slide closed. “What’s going on?” Kate yells over the sound of the train pulling away, the too-big beanie she picked up at the gift shop tugged down low over her ears. It has a fucked-up knitted version of the Empire State building on it, and a red pom-pom on top. She’s still cold.

“We’re making a detour.” Cassie keeps tugging her along and Kate doesn’t have a lot of choice except to follow. “There’s something you’ve gotta see.”

“Does it involve heated seats and spiked hot chocolate? Because I’m all for that.”

“Possibly on the second, especially if you brought that fake ID you promised me, and the first one is more up to you.” And she laughs at that, like she knows something Kate doesn’t.

They’ve gotten through the line and they’re actually standing inside the packed nightclub when Kate realizes exactly what it is that Cassie knows.

 _Dazzlers_ isn’t a super-high end place but it’s not a dive either, and the dance floor is packed. Laser lights and glow sticks are screaming neon everywhere she turns, and the DJ booth looking down over the dance floor at the far end of the room is all lit up as well.

The light’s how she recognizes him, white hair and all, though he’s gotten older too.

They all have. She’s seen Billy on and off, of course. The teleporting thing makes it easier, as does the actually-having-his-phone-number thing. But his twin… it’s been literal years since another New Year’s Eve, another party, and a kiss at midnight that had left her breathless and wanting.

It had scared her then. Scared him too, most likely, fresh off a rescue from some other dimension and disoriented as hell.

Tommy was as bad with the whole concept of ‘feelings’ as she was, liked to pretend there was nothing on the inside but sass and snark. _Kate_ likes to think she knows better, even if that means acknowledging he probably sees the same vulnerabilities inside her.

“Since when does Tommy DJ?”

Cassie shrugs. “He says he learned how from a guy he was travelling with. In space.”

Noh-varr. Now there was a bizarre alliance. Kate hadn’t seen it coming then and couldn’t really picture it now, but it seems to have worked out. “Our lives are supremely weird, you know that?”

Cassie grabs her hand again, tucks her arm snugly in Kate’s so that she can’t escape, and starts to pull her around the room toward the stairs leading up to the booth.

Tommy’s got his headphones on and his shirt off, a bundle of white fabric tucked into the back waistband of his tight black jeans and hanging down toward his knee. Even from the dance floor Kate can see how cut he’s gotten, the lines of his body hard and fierce. _Abs. Yum._

_Stop that._

“No,” Kate puts on the brakes, almost yanking Cassie off her feet. “We’re not going to bug him.”

He’s behind a plate of glass, there’s no way he’ll notice another pair of girls in this crowd of hundreds, and that’s fine. They can listen for a bit and then leave without disturbing his flow. Because he looks really good up there, his hands moving just fast enough that she can tell he’s messing with time. She still knows what to watch for.

“Chicken!” Cassie stops moving and pouts when she realizes Kate’s at a standstill. “Go say hi at least.”

“He’s not going to want to see me.”

Cassie frowns. It’s a terrible look on her and Kate feels bad for putting it there. “Why do you say that?”

“He went to space, he never called.” It’s reasonable.

“You went to California, you never called.” She pokes Kate in the shoulder.

Kate scowls at her. “You were dead, you don’t get to say anything.”

“Being dead is a get-out-of-phone-calls-free card,” Cassie sasses back, unrelenting. “Neither of you have that excuse. Now come on before I call Clint and tell him you’re being a chicken.”

“If you think Clint has any high ground to stand on when it comes to being a functional human being-” Kate’s shouting at Cassie as she gets dragged past the big speakers and halfway up the stairs to the booth.

Cassie’s not listening. She never does.

There are posters on the wall advertising different shows, different guest DJs, and one of them catches her eye. _DJ Tommy Max._ Kate can’t help the laugh that bursts out of her, and she cocks her thumb at it when Cassie gives her that quizzical look. “Is he serious?” she asks, shouting over the music and the swelling noise of the crowd.

“For Maximoff,” Cassie shrugs. “Billy says he’s been having identity crises. Apparently being hauled into an evil dimension will do that to you.”  

Kate’s just bewildered enough by that entire sequence of words that she follows Cassie up the rest of the stairs and stops at the door to the DJ booth. Tommy’s focused, hyper-focused, doesn’t see them and she still has time to turn and leave.

She doesn’t. She watches his hands instead, the shape of his body as he moves. He looks over his shoulder at them, his eyes widening, then he’s nothing but a blur. She’s not quite sure exactly what he’s doing but she can guess from the way the soundboard reacts. He’s set up some more tracks, given himself a couple of minutes of free time, and then he drops his big fancy wireless headphones down around his neck and comes over to talk to them.

His t-shirt’s still off, his jeans ripped at the knees, his shoulders and chest broader now than they were before. The booth’s warm, thanks to all the electronics racked up on the walls, and there’s a faint sheen down the center of his chest that might be sweat.

Damn. Either his body’s gotten a whole lot more amazing since they were dumbass teenagers ricocheting around NYC together, or she wasn’t looking at him hard enough. Because _yikes_.

(Hey. Kate’s only human.)

Except Tommy’s looking hesitant, and when she ever seen him _hesitate_ before? Maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d changed.

“Looking good, Hawkingbird.” He’s the first one to speak, looking her up and down so fast she barely notices it. “Nice hat.”

She grabs it off her head. She’d forgotten she was wearing it, the Empire State building and the pom-pom soft in her hand. Leave it to Tommy to remember that first stupid code name idea, and to waste no time reminding her of it as well. He hadn’t even been there, the big dummy. “You too. That is, looking good, not nice hat, because you’re not… wearing. A hat.” When did she go stupid over this idiot? Cassie’s covering her mouth to hide a smile. Not very well, mind you.  

Tommy doesn’t bother trying to hide his grin. “Just passing through?” he asks, zipping over to give Cassie a quick hug before he lets her go.

“We’re in town for New Year’s,” Kate answers, and it’s not enough. She has two years worth of things to tell him, a backlog of jumbled thoughts and impressions, questions that don’t have words around them yet and might never.

Cassie jumps in to save her from her own whirling thoughts, grinning at Tommy. “We thought we’d watch the ball drop in Times’ Square, for old times’ sake.”

“Sure, because elbowing your way through packs of drunks in order to stand in the cold for three hours sounds like a great time,” he replies cheerfully, and gives them both a thumbs-up. “Have fun.” It sounds like he means that part sincerely. Kate’s not entirely sure if she’s able to tell anymore.

The rest of the conversation’s banal, a couple of basic ‘are you living here now’ and ‘how’s California’ back-and-forths that don’t reveal much of anything. The three of them were heroes together once. They fought back to back, bled together, cried together. They held each others’ lives in their hands.

Now they’re making small talk in a DJ booth in a Manhattan club and Kate feels weirdly hollow inside.

Tommy keeps an eye on his board and in a minute he turns back to mess with it again. His head’s ducked and he’s not paying attention to her, platinum-white bangs tumbling down over his face. He needs a haircut. She needs a hug.

Kate should back off, should take the chance to slip away, find someplace where she and Cassie can sit and do a giggling post-mortem. But a coloured light catches Tommy through the window and it shines him up all green, and she knows that she can’t leave, not yet. Not if he’s going to be going home alone.

“When are you done tonight?” Kate asks, and, “have you got plans with anyone?”

He looks up at her and there’s surprise in his eyes, a flash of something that’s not suspicion, but it isn’t ease either. How had she left it alone this long, that he could be surprised by her caring?

Whatever it is she thinks she sees is gone in the next second and his posture changes slightly, even though she never sees him move. How much time did he just steal for himself to figure out what he wanted to say? He lives in a timeline parallel to the rest of them, but longer. And for so much of it, he’s alone.

“The club closes at two,” Tommy answers, like nothing at all has just happened. His thumbs are looped in his pockets, super-casual-like. “What did you have in mind?”

Cassie’s behind him and she’s signalling, trying to catch Kate’s eye. It’s the obvious move, so Kate doesn’t even need to watch her hands to read the signs she’s making in her palm. “The Denny’s,” she says, and the memory-smell of grease and pancakes and bad strong coffee hits her all at once.

Tommy doesn’t ask which one, where or why. The six of them had had enough late nights there after training and patrols that Kate could probably redraw the pattern on the formica tabletops from memory. “I’ll be there,” Tommy says, and an old familiar smile curls up his lips for the first time. “Two-oh-one. Sharp.”

Kate and Cassie stay and dance instead of fighting their way back out into the cold night. The lights put stars in Cassie’s hair and she’s smug enough that Kate can almost believe she’s planned this from the beginning.

It turns out Tommy’s pretty good at the whole DJ thing. She’s got to remember to tell him that when they see him later.

She’s got a lot of things to tell him.  

* * *

He’s not the only one to show up.

Cassie'd started texting the moment they left the booth, and her phone’s been going off all night. Kate’s bleary-eyed and wired at the same time, a combination of jet lag, coffee, Tequila Sunrises and dehydration, and she’s not been paying nearly enough attention to Cassie’s sly grin.

So when Kate and Cassie straggle in to the Denny’s, David and America are already there, teleported in from god knows what dimension she’s been punching her way through lately.

It’s a scene she hadn’t expected, but it hits the right spot inside all the same. David’s giving Tommy shit about the nose-high stack of pancakes on the plate in front of him and Tommy’s rattling off statistics about speedster powers and calorie burn. America’s the one who sees them first, because she notices everything, and her hug is all Kate needs to bring her back down to solid ground.

Kate sits on Tommy’s lap first, because there’s dominance that needs to be re-established here, and he doesn’t push her off.

A blue flash out of the corner of her eye means the guys have arrived, and it’s not just Billy and Teddy who saunter through the front door a minute later. They’re in party clothes but Eli’s just wearing jeans and a t-shirt (right, he’s still out in Arizona), and the three of them are already bickering about something she doesn’t care enough about to listen to.

Billy just about does a triple-take when he sees her on Tommy’s lap, one of Tommy’s arms looped casually around her waist. But Teddy gives him a look and steps on his toe and he slams his mouth shut. Good boy.

Three pots of coffee and about eighteen orders of fries later, Billy’s in Teddy’s lap, America and _Eli_ are bickering about something, and David’s giving Kate crap about the whole ‘staying in Venice Beach’ situation. She’s sitting in the booth now, Tommy on one side of her stealing her fries and Cassie on the other drinking her milkshake, and everything is fine.

More than fine. She’s anchored again, and it’s just different enough that it doesn’t feel wrong, or like they’re trying to recapture a vibe that doesn’t exist anymore.

Old shoes, new soles. Comfy.

* * *

She wakes up in Tommy’s shithole apartment in Queens the next morning, his tangled hair white on the pillow beside her. He opens his green, green eyes and the smile that flashes on his face when he sees her still there isn’t hesitant at all.

Kate’s phone has over two dozen messages on it, some from the gang here, some from the gang back home. There’s a photo that Cassie must have had Billy take after Kate and Tommy slipped away, because both her hands are occupied making a big heart-shape in the middle of the photo field and she’s making kissy-faces.

 _Jerk_ , Kate texts.

 _BFF,_ Cassie texts back. And _‘Meri and I raided the minibar while you were gone._

_Where are we meeting for breakfast? This time I’m buying._


End file.
